Saturday, January 17, 2009

Tasty Tortillas

Here I am, finally making the first post on my very own blog, following through with one of my New Years resolutions. I wanted a place to record highlights of my journey, a journey towards self-sufficiency and a simpler life that is focused on the things that really matter.

This week I finally tackled making tortillas. It wasn't near as hard as I had imagined it, as a matter of fact, it was really easy. The kids loved them and I have decided this is a definite addition to my well stocked pantry project. I opted to go with the Tortilla Mix so that all I add is water. I'm doing the Flour Tortillas and hand rolling them with an old wooden rolling pen. I think it will be good arm exercise!

I bought 20 lbs of the mix and hope to find it in bulk at our local wholesale club store. I'll be freezing the bags of flour first and then storing in buckets with oxygen absorbers. I've got to order some mylar bags first. Always one more thing to gather in!

The tortillas were warm (fresh off the griddle), tasty (kids ate them as fast as I cooked them), filling (always good with a large family), fun (I let the kids roll their own), versatile (you can fill them with a huge variety of foods), economical (very important in these trying times) and easy! I love easy!

I learned that the tortilla presses are most often used for the corn toritllas (which I haven't tried yet) and that there is such a thing as an electric tortilla press that cooks them at the same time. I cooked mine on a hot electric griddle but could also use my black cast iron skillets and griddles.

I discovered a good variety of YouTube videos that demonstrate proper rolling techniques, recipes and cooking methods for Flour Tortillas. Seeing something being done really helps me when I'm tackling something new.

My mom told me that she is actually made some Old Fashioned Fried Pies out of her batch this week. She had some cans of the Fruit Pie Filling and used that. She said they really turned out well. I'll be trying that soon.

For one of our batches I walked over to my canning pantry and chose a mason jar filled with seasoned ground beef that I had home canned a few months ago. Dumped it, warmed it, and we had a feast. Toppings included refried beans, salsa (a Pace Copy Cat recipe I had made the day before), sour cream, chopped onions, jalepenos. They were a huge hit, not one child wrinkled their nose in disapproval!

3 comments:

  1. Hi Stephanie,
    Found your blog on your comment from mine! Congrats on joining the blogging world. I want to say that it is addicting, but given both of our busy lives, it is only able to be just so addicting. Would love to hear more from you!

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  2. Stephanie,
    can you email me at mommyturtle.gmail.com?
    Christy

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